It’s gotten so predictable at this point and it cheapens the concept.
Sometimes there is not some greater good behind contemptible actions, sometimes evil is done for purely selfish reasons or simply because one can.
Is Sylvanas pitiable? Absolutely, she was brutally murdered and forced into an unholy existence against her will and, at heart, she just wants to live. And after working so hard to avenge herself on her murderer, she realized with horror that no cheerful afterlife awaited her due to her committing acts that would be considered evil in order to accomplish her goal.
But this is the point at which she willfully chose to embrace evil of her own volition by working with the Jailer to escape the hellish existence of the Maw. What she did from this point wasn’t for her people, it was all for HER.
Now I get it, believing you’re destined for the equivalent of WoW Hell would do a number on just about anyone and probably see you scramble to find any way of avoiding it. Even genocide wouldn’t be off the table at that point if it was your immortal soul destined for torment if you perished.
But…the thing is, she never once tried to find a better way. Instead of considering that if her actions condemned her to torment then by definition they could also redeem her, she took the selfish path and embraced that evil because it was easier than accepting that she was the one who’d have to change.
And that’s what makes her such a compelling villain as well as why her end should follow the same pattern. She is a TRAGEDY because she was not born evil but chose to become beholden to her flaws that were steadily magnified until her fall was irreversible.
She presents Blizzard with a prime opportunity to showcase how evil can be born from something as simple as fear, in her case the fear of death. She didn’t want to die because she knew what awaited her, but instead of understanding why she had come to that place she chose to become beholden to her innate selfishness.
It was Azeroth’s fault, the Shadowland’s fault, it was everyone’s fault but HERS. In the end, her existence became defined by the personality flaws she knew existed but willfully chose to embrace instead of correct. In the end, she was a coward who took the easy way out by blaming the world instead of herself and chose to inflict immense suffering on it to keep the claws of the Maw at bay for just a little longer.
She does not deserve redemption because there was no greater good to her actions, she was simply trying to stave off eternal torment that, deep down, she knew she deserved. She is a monument to her own selfish refusal to change and that’s what makes her truly evil.
So I implore Blizzard…don’t trivialize that by giving her a way out. Let evil be shown to be evil. Redemption should only come with a desire to change and she does NOT want to, please don’t reward her with something she hasn’t earned.